In the Interest of X.S.

• Decision Date: 06 November 2006
• Docket Number: No. 26219.,26219.
• Citation: 639 S.E.2d 144
• Parties: In the Interest of AMIR X.S., a juvenile under the age of seventeen, Appellant.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

Page 144

639 S.E.2d 144

In the Interest of AMIR X.S., a juvenile under the age of seventeen, Appellant.

No. 26219.

Supreme Court of South Carolina.

Heard September 20, 2006.

Decided November 6, 2006.

Rehearing Denied January 18, 2007.

Appellate Defender Eleanor Duffy Cleary, of Columbia, for Appellant.

Attorney General Henry Dargan McMaster, Chief Deputy Attorney General John W. McIntosh, Assistant Deputy Attorney General Salley W. Elliott, Assistant Attorney General Deborah R.J. Shupe, all of Columbia, and Solicitor Jerry W. Peace, of Greenwood, for Respondent.

Chief Justice TOAL:

This case involves a constitutional attack on a statute defining the offense of disturbing schools. The family court upheld the statute's constitutionality and subsequently adjudicated Appellant delinquent for violating the statute. We affirm in part and vacate in part.

FACTUAL/PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

The State filed a juvenile petition in family court in October 2004 alleging that Amir X.S. ("Appellant") violated S.C.Code Ann. § 16-17-420 (2003) by willfully, unlawfully, and unnecessarily interfering with and disturbing the students and teachers at Southside Learning Center in Greenwood County, South Carolina.

Before trial, Appellant moved to quash the juvenile petition claiming that § 16-17-420 was unconstitutionally vague and overbroad in violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Section 16-17-420 provides in pertinent part:

"It shall be unlawful: (1) For any person wilfully or unnecessarily (a) to interfere with or to disturb in any way or in any place the students or teachers of any school or college in this State, (b) to loiter about such school or college premises or (c) to act in an obnoxious manner thereon ...."

S.C.Code Ann. § 16-17-420(1).

At the hearing on Appellant's motion to quash, the State argued Appellant lacked standing to challenge the statute's constitutionality because Appellant's conduct plainly fell under its terms. The family court upheld the constitutionality of the statute and denied Appellant's motion. After hearing testimony from each party, the family court found there was sufficient evidence to adjudicate Appellant delinquent for the violation of § 16-17-420. The family court committed Appellant to ninety days in the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice and imposed one year of probation.

Appellant filed this appeal pursuant to Rule 203, SCACR¹ and raises the following issues for review:

I. Is § 16-17-420 unconstitutional because it is overly broad and punishes a substantial amount of protected free speech in relation to the statute's plainly legitimate sweep?

II. Does Appellant have standing to challenge § 16-17-420 on grounds of vagueness; and if so, is the statute unconstitutional because it is written in terms so vague that a person of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning?

LAW/ANALYSIS

I. Overbreadth

Appellant argues that S.C.Code Ann. § 16-17-420 is unconstitutional because it is overly broad and punishes a substantial amount of protected free speech in relation to the statute's plainly legitimate sweep. We disagree.

The First Amendment overbreadth doctrine is an exception to the usual rules regarding the standards for facial challenges. First, because the very existence of overly broad statutes may have such a deterrent effect on constitutionally protected expression, the traditional rule of standing² is relaxed for facial³ overbreadth claims involving First Amendment rights. Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601, 612, 93 S.Ct. 2908, 37 L.Ed.2d 830 (1973). Under this relaxed rule of standing, the party challenging a statute simply must demonstrate that the statute could cause someone else—anyone else—to refrain from constitutionally protected expression. Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U.S. 479, 486, 85 S.Ct. 1116, 14 L.Ed.2d 22 (1965). In further recognition of the threat to First Amendment freedoms, any enforcement of a statute subject to an overbreadth claim is wholly forbidden until and unless a limiting construction or partial invalidation so narrows it so as to remove the seeming threat to protected expression. Broadrick, 413 U.S. at 613, 93 S.Ct. 2908. These exceptions to the traditional rules of practice have been implemented out of concern that the threat of enforcement of an overly broad law may deter or "chill" constitutionally protected speech—especially when the overly broad law imposes criminal sanctions. Virginia v. Hicks, 539 U.S. 113, 119, 123 S.Ct. 2191, 156 L.Ed.2d 148 (2003).

In light of these exceptions to the traditional rules of practice, courts have been "sensitive to the risk that the doctrine itself might sweep so broadly that the exception to ordinary standing requirements would swallow the general rule." Members of the City Council of the City of Los Angeles v. Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. 789, 799, 104 S.Ct. 2118, 80 L.Ed.2d 772 (1984). In developing the overbreadth doctrine, the United States Supreme Court has cautioned:

. . . its function, a limited one at the outset, attenuates as the otherwise unprotected behavior that it forbids the State to sanction moves from "pure speech" toward conduct[,] and that conduct—even if expressive—falls within the scope of otherwise valid criminal laws that reflect legitimate state interests in maintaining comprehensive controls over harmful, constitutionally unprotected conduct.

Broadrick, 413 U.S. at 615, 93 S.Ct. 2908.

In an effort to balance these varying interests, courts require that the alleged First Amendment overbreadth must not only be real, but also "substantial" in order to apply the overbreadth exception in a particular case. Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. at 799-800, 104 S.Ct. 2118 (quoting Broadrick, 413 U.S. at 615, 93 S.Ct. 2908). Therefore, the doctrine of overbreadth permits a court to wholly invalidate a statute only when the terms are so broad that they punish a substantial amount of protected free speech in relation to the statute's otherwise plainly legitimate sweep—until and unless a limiting construction or partial invalidation narrows it so as to remove the threat or deterrence to constitutionally protected expression. Hicks, 539 U.S. at 118-119, 123 S.Ct. 2191.

Turning to the instant case, we first note that although conduct generally is not protected by the First Amendment, expressive conduct may be. U.S. v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 376, 88 S.Ct. 1673, 20 L.Ed.2d 672 (1968). However, we do not find that § 16-17-420 prohibits the kind of clearly expressive conduct historically subject to overbreadth adjudication in the school context. Notably, in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503, 89 S.Ct. 733, 21 L.Ed.2d 731 (1969), the United States Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a school board's actions suspending students for wearing black armbands to school in protest of the Vietnam War. In Tinker, the court held that wearing armbands as a "silent, passive expression of opinion" was protected symbolic speech regardless of the popularity of the opinion being expressed. Restricting this type of speech when it was "unaccompanied by any disorder or disturbance" could not be tolerated under the First Amendment. 393 U.S. at 508, 89 S.Ct. 733. Prior to that, in Edwards v. South Carolina, 372 U.S. 229, 83 S.Ct. 680, 9 L.Ed.2d 697 (1963), the United States Supreme Court held that breach of the peace convictions for high school and college students peaceably assembling and protesting on public grounds were unconstitutional as violative of the First Amendment.

An analysis of § 16-17-420 is more appropriately derived from cases analyzing statutes targeting conduct termed "disruptive" to schools, with no specific prohibition otherwise on First Amendment expressive conduct. Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 92 S.Ct. 2294, 33 L.Ed.2d 222 (1972) is the leading United States Supreme Court decision in that context. In Grayned, the petitioner was convicted under an Illinois antinoise ordinance for his part in a demonstration in front of a school. He subsequently challenged the constitutionality of the ordinance which prohibited "any noise or diversion which disturbs or tends to disturb the peace or good order of a school" on grounds of vagueness and overbreadth. 408 U.S. at 108, 92 S.Ct. 2294. Relying on Tinker as its touchstone, the court held that although the statute tended to target expressive conduct, such expressive conduct could be restricted in the school environment if the forbidden conduct "materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others." Id. at 118, 92 S.Ct. 2294 (quoting Tinker, 393 U.S. at 513, 89 S.Ct. 733). The court distinguished the demonstration at issue in Grayned from the wearing of armbands in Tinker primarily on the grounds that the Tinker students "neither interrupted school activities nor sought to intrude in the school affairs or the lives of others." Id. (quoting Tinker, 393 U.S. at 514, 89 S.Ct. 733). It further noted the limited scope of the ordinance, which it construed to punish only conduct that disrupted normal school activities—a decision necessarily made on a case-by-case basis. Id. at 119. The Grayned court concluded by saying that the city's "modest restriction on some peaceful picketing represents a considered and specific legislative judgment that some kinds of expressive activity should be restricted at a particular time and place, here in order to protect the schools." Id. at 121, 92 S.Ct. 2294. Such a reasonable regulation, it held, was consistent with the First Amendment and therefore the antinoise ordinance was not invalid on its face. Id. at 121, 92 S.Ct. 2294.

More analogous to the case before this Court is McAlpine v. Reese, 309 F.Supp. 136 (1970), in which the federal district court in Michigan upheld the constitutionality of a Michigan ordinance similar to § 16-17-420 against facial attacks of vagueness...